The purpose of this study was to explore whether sex differences and chronotypical orientation (morningness-eveningness) differences exist in levels of procrastination. The sample consisted of 165 undergraduate English university students who responded to a procrastination inventory. Participants most frequently identified as chronic to severe procrastinators across groups. Contrary to previous findings, neither sex displayed differences in their levels of procrastination, nor did evening and morning chronotype differ in procrastination intensity.
Although the study needs to be replicated with a larger, evenly between groups distributed sample, it was concluded that most participants classified as chronic to severe procrastinators which has implications for universities to take measures to lower academic procrastination amongst students. Procrastination has more and more become a matter of interest across multiple disciplines (Ainsle, 2005); reaching from finance, as people put off their tax returns, or dealing with money troubles (Kasper, 2004), to medicine, where people postpone seeing their doctors (Siriois, 2007).
Lingering concerns and allowing them to accumulate over time, is believed to be on the rise (Kachgal et al. , 2001) as the failure of other self-regulatory behaviours increased over the past 25 years (Griffith & Parke, 2002). Procrastination also emerges to be a distressing phenomenon with over 95 per cent of people wanting to minimise it (O’Brien, 2002) and generally characterising it as bad, regretful, damaging and idiotic (Briody, 1980).
Consistent with this perspective, procrastinators have been found to perform more poorly overall (Steel, Brothen, & Wambach, 2001) and to be more despondent in their well-being, long-term (Tice & Baumeister, 1997). A range of definitions currently coexists as to what constitutes procrastination behaviour, as do multiple measures of the construct. The disciplines of behavioural economics and neuroscience suggest procrastination to be an irrationally postponement of tasks, which is the deliberate deferral of an intended action regardless of the expectation of he outcome or situation to be more unpleasant, difficult or unsatisfactory (Steel, 2007). This standpoint is in line with neurobiological findings, suggesting that long term objectives or planning are largely constructed in the prefrontal cortex; however limbic system impulses, that are predominately sensitive to concrete immediate gratification stimuli, can supersede prefrontal impulses (McClure et al. , 2007). As a result, intended tasks are being postponed in the presence of a sudden, temporary temptation.
Focusing on the genetic predisposition to procrastination, Arvey et al. (2003, as cited in Steel, 2007) conducted a study comparing the degree to which 118 identical and 93 fraternal male twins procrastinated and found strong intra-class correlations, which accounted for 22 per cent of the variance that procrastination was associated with genetic factors. Additionally, Elliot (2002, as cited in Steel, 2007) examines test-retest data for a sample of 281 participants before and after 10 years and found a correlation of . 7. He inferred that procrastination is adequately stable to be considered a trait. Taken together these findings, the genetic basis and personality trait stability suggest a biological component to procrastination. To assess the relationship between procrastination and sex differences, multiple studies have been conducted. However, their findings still remain contradictory. Sirin (2011) and Sherma and Kaur (2011) found no differences between female and male adolescents in procrastination scores in student samples.
However, Özer, Demir and Ferrari (2010) compared a sample of 363 female and 421 male tertiary students and found males to engage in more frequent academic procrastination than females, whereas women displayed greater procrastination than men due to reported fear of failure. Their results are in line with Steel’s (2007) meta-analysis findings, which found men to procrastinate slightly more than women. Procrastinators have also been found to inadequately estimate the required time to complete activities (Lay, 1988), in addition to proceeding with their intended actions (Lay & Burns, 1991).
These findings may suggest a basis for an association between task-time relationship and procrastination. Multiple studies addressed the relationship between chronotype and procrastination. Chronotype is defined as the preference for time in sleep-wake cycles and as the time of a day in which the individual is most active, i. e. completes challenging physical and intellectual tasks (Carrier & Monk, 2000). Morningness and eveningness underlie circadian rhythm activity, which has an approximately 24-hour oscillation.
Evening chronotype are considered as being ‘case-shifted’ towards the afternoon or evening in their activities (Bailey & Heitkemper, 2001). Case shifting can have important implications for the individual in their task performance. Carrier and Monk assessed performance differences in morning and evening people in a cognitive task and found that individuals high in morningness performed better on cognitive tasks than individuals low in morningness.
Conversely, people high in eveningness showed improved scores on the same cognitive performance task when completed in the afternoon or evening. In addition, Ferrari et al. (1997) surveyed the relationship between procrastination and chronotype in North American students and found that evening people self-identified as procrastinators, as well as displaying the tendency to perform most activities at night or in the afternoon. Hess, Sherman and Goodman (2002) extended Ferrari et al. ’s research by assessing the relationship between eveningness, neuroticism and academic procrastination.
Their results reflected a strong correlation between evening chronotype, as well as neuroticism and procrastination. In addition, their findings established neuroticism to be a partial mediator between evening chronotype and procrastination in a student population. Overall, evening chronotype has been found to be the primary chronopsychological orientation in undergraduate students (Adan & Natale, 2002). To expand previous findings, Díaz-Morales, Ferrari and Cohen (2008), examined the effects of eveningness and morningness in an adult population.
Their results were consistent with previous findings on undergraduate students, as evening chronotype individuals procrastinated to a higher degree and tended to engage in activities much later than the majority of other people. The present study was designed to replicate and extend the study by Ferrari et al. (1997), by including a measure of the degree to which different chronotype procrastinate, as well as assessing sex differences across different procrastination categories. It was anticipated that males would display higher levels of procrastination overall than females.
It was also predicted that evening people would procrastinate to a higher degree than morning people. Method Design The experiment was a natural group design in which participants were instructed to respond to a procrastination inventory. The two independent variables constituted the participant’s sex (male or female) and chronotype of the participant (morning or evening). The dependent variable was defined as the level of procrastination in which procrastination scores of 20 and lower reflected an occasional procrastinator, 21-30 a chronic procrastinator and scores of 31 and higher were classified as severe procrastinators.
Additionally, a case study was conducted on one individual of the sample. Participants The sample was a convenience sample, consisting of 30 male and 135 female (M = 19. 78 years, SD = 3. 32 years) naïve participants who participated as part of an undergraduate introductory psychology course requirement. The case study participant was a 26-year-old female. No reward was given to participants. Materials The Procrastination Quotient Inventory (Florey, 2005) was employed to assess the level of procrastination. 0 individual statements were answered on a 4-point Likert-type scale (1 = ‘strongly disagree’ and 4 = ‘Strongly agree’) and summed up to obtain the procrastination quotient. Note that higher scores indicated higher levels of procrastination. Demographics for age and sex were obtained and chronotype preference was recorded. The Procrastination Inventory and scoring procedure are included in Appendix A. Procedure Participants competed the Procrastination Inventory and were further instructed to score their own questionnaire. Instructions were in writing and were presented verbally by the experimenter.
Participants were further asked to record procrastination scores, age, sex and chronotype on separate sheets of paper (to ensure anonymity) which were collected by the experimenter for further analysis. Participants were debriefed and provided with self-help options. Results First, to examine whether male and female participants differed overall on their procrastination scores, mean scores for men and women were compared. There was little mean difference in procrastination scores between men and women. For female participants mean procrastination scores were slightly higher than for male participants.
However, there is no evidence that women (z = 0. 07, p >. 05) procrastinated more than men (z = -0. 33, p >. 05). Mean procrastination scores for male and female participants are summarised in Table1. Female and male distributions of procrastination scores did not differ in skewness and were both slightly positively skewed (with skewness= -0. 13 (0. 21), and skewness= -0. 39 (0. 43) respectively). Conversely, kurtosis for the male procrastination data constituted 1. 54 (0. 83), indicating that the majority of male procrastination scores was located at the higher end of the distribution.
The results indicate that, although little mean difference between men and women in levels of procrastination were found; a large proportion of male participants obtained higher procrastination scores, whereas female participants procrastination scores distributed roughly evenly, indicating that men tend to procrastinate more. Percentages of male and female participants falling in each procrastination category are displayed in Figure 1. Table 1 Mean and Standard Deviation of Procrastination Scores of Male and Female Participants Procrastination Score MenWomen N30165 M23. 8025. 56 SD4. 934. 19 Figure 1.
Percentages of male and female samples across procrastination categories. Second, to examine whether there was a difference between morning and evening chronotype in procrastination scores, mean scores for morning and evening people were compared. There was little mean difference between morning and evening chronotype. Although mean evening chronotype procrastination scores were slightly higher than those of morning people, there was no evidence that evening people procrastinated more than morning people, z = 0. 13; p >. 05. Mean procrastination scores for morning and evening chronotype are summarised in Table 2.
Both distributions were positively skewed (morning skewness = -0. 06 and evening skewness = -0. 35). However, evening people data displayed a leptokurtic distribution (kurtosis = 0. 84), indicating a higher number of peaked procrastination scores, whereas morning people data distribution was platykurtic and closer located around the mean (kurtosis = -0. 33). Percentages of evening and morning chronotype participants falling in each procrastination category are displayed in Figure 2. Table 2 Mean and Standard Deviation of Procrastination Scores of Morning and Evening Chronotype Participants
Procrastination Score MorningEvening N47118 M24. 2825. 62 SD4. 224. 39 Figure 2. Percentages of morning and evening chronotype samples across procrastination categories. Case study. To determine how much the participant deviates from the mean, her z-score was computed. For the raw score of 19, z = -1. 51. This value classified the participant as an occasional procrastinator. The probability of the participant obtaining a score of 19 was 6. 55%. Discussion The main purpose of this study was to establish whether males and females and morning and evening people differed in their levels of procrastination.
The results showed no overall difference in levels of procrastination between men and women and did not support the prediction that men would display higher levels of procrastination than women. On average, both sexes scored in the chronic procrastination category. These findings were in support of Sirin (2011) and Sherma and Kaur’s (2011) results that procrastination is uniform amongst the sexes. Özer et al. (2010) found males to engage more frequently in procrastination whereas females displayed less frequent procrastination but instead displayed greater procrastination when postponing tasks.
These findings were not at odds with the current study, as frequency and intensity of procrastination were not measured separately. Eventual differences may have been combined in the underlying study and could not be measured. Hence, no difference was detected between male and female levels of procrastination. In spite of no difference in average procrastination levels between men and women being detected, data inconsistencies in male sample data were identified. The kurtosis value for male sample data suggested more frequent, higher scores in the chronic procrastinator category.
This discrepancy should be subject to future investigation. Increased, evenly distributed sample size and a more sensitive test to different degrees of procrastination may help elucidate these inconsistencies in data. The results for evening and morning chronotype did not reveal a difference in levels of procrastination, although evening chronotype procrastination was marginally higher. Therefore the hypothesis that evening people exhibit higher levels of procrastination was not supported. Averagely, both evening and morning people scored in the chronic procrastination category.
This undistinguished finding was inconsistent with Ferrari et al. ’s (1997) findings, in which eveningness was associated with higher procrastination. However, Ferrari et al. based their preliminary results on participants’ self-identification as procrastinators and related these to eveningness and morningness. They did not assess the level of procrastination within each chronotype. Still, the present study results also show discrepancies to Díaz-Morales, Ferrari and Cohen’s (2008) study that established that evening people procrastinate to a higher degree than morning people.
However, their observed results were based on an adult population. The underlying study, on the other hand, focused on a tertiary education student sample only. The indifferent result may suggest that students do not differ in levels of procrastination between morning and evening chronotype overall, but instead generally exhibit high levels of procrastination as compared to the adult population, as identified by Díaz-Morales, Ferrari and Cohen. In addition, the majority of participants in the present study were of evening chronotype.
According to Adan and Natale (2002), the predominant psychochronological orientation of students is eveningness, which is coherent with findings of the present study. The assessed case in the present study constituted an occasional procrastinator. The result was well below the sample average for evening chronotype as well as for female participants. This deviation may have been a possible consequence of the participant’s mature age. Overall, the majority of participants classified as either chronic or severe procrastinators.
These results yield enormous consequences for the student population. An underestimation of the time required for completion of projects and studying has been associated with poorer academic performance and in turn with unsatisfactory grades. Consecutively, this induces stress, which weakens the immune system. Moreover, a dangerous cycle is set off, as a diminished immune system once more places additional stress on the individual, which in succession has a negative effect on performance (Pychyl, Morin, & Salmon, 2000).
An unawareness of stress management and inexperience with coping strategies has in this case been associated with illness. Taken together, these findings with the appalling results of the underlying study regarding student procrastination, teaching institutions are at duty to oppose academic procrastination. As a possible alternative to counteract procrastination, universities can employ seminars, with a special focus on procrastination. These may equal standard-procedure plagiarism seminars, in a way that these would be mandatory to attend as part of a class requirement.
Moreover, these anti-procrastination seminars would educate students on the essences of procrastination, outline possible consequences, i. e. lowered immune system response and illness, and would also teach copying mechanism and useful strategies of overcoming procrastination. These strategies may include breaking tasks down into smaller problems, tracking progress and self-rewards (O’Reilly, 2007). Knowledge about appropriate strategies of overcoming procrastination behaviour may affect students’ postponement of tasks positively, as practice of anti-procrastination activities was shown to decrease procrastination.
In conclusion, this study examined differences between men and women, as well as the chronotypical orientation of individuals (morningness-eveningness) in their levels of procrastination. Although no differences were detected between males and females, nor between morning and evening chronotype, the results indicated a unified tendency of chronic to severe academic procrastination. Consequently, measures to counteract procrastination need to be established.
